Category: Spirituality (Page 1 of 19)

The Most Important Agreement I’ve Made.

February 27, 2019 / Tom

Link to this article here.

Mostly, as I see it now, I had agreed to say I had forgiven myself and others when, in fact, I had forgiven no one.

I was paying lip service to the process of healing without ever really doing the healing itself. In other words, I was not being impeccable with my wordin this instance and in so many others. I was not living, nor saying, my truth. Instead, I just wanted to make you happy.

I wrote this article (for Elephant Journal) to highlight one of the greatest tools of transformation I’ve discovered. I hope you find value in these words and find a practice that is both sustainable and life-changing.

Peace and love,

Goodbye, Dear Mother

June 27, 2015 / Tom

I want to disclaim that I am not sure where this piece is going, or how it will get there. I can only say it needs to come out of me in whatever fashion it wants, in whatever form it decides to take.

There are so many times when you are faced with where you’ve come from. Each time is a challenge, each time is a test. Mostly, though, each time is a testament to where you are.

Just now, a few moments ago, I found out my mother died. We had no real relationship in the last decade, save the actions and reactions I’d have to certain things. As much as I tried to distance myself from her, there was always something there that reminded me that she was never really that far away, despite the distance I tried to put between us.

My mother didn’t have an easy life it seems. She was born an Army brat to a tough German father who lived quite often in the old methods of old days. I would hear stories of switches being used, of abuse in the household and the fact that it was “the way it was”, as if there could never be any need to change it. I was told my Grandfather wanted a son, and as such she was given the nickname “Mike” despite not being born with the desired parts.

Yet, I could never be quite sure of what was truth when it came to my mother. My life was filled with a steady stream of lies, and I learned how to be quite a good liar from someone I considered “the master.” I could watch her feign illness to get sympathy from a relative, or to end a conversation she didn’t want to have, or to begin a conversation with someone who wanted so much to be somewhere else.

I learned much more egregious lies that are better suited for another time and place. Those lies affected me greatly, first creating a master liar in me who distrusted everything, and then creating a man so in love with the truth he could embrace nothing else. I haven’t rejected lying, I’ve simply replaced it with such a love of truth that nothing else fits between the spaces in my life.

I can thank my mother for that to some large extent. I’m not a guy who is honest because I was taught to be, I’m honest because I was taught not to be, and I learned the destruction and sadness that dishonesty creates firsthand, not from a textbook or words of some great master somewhere.

I learned violence from my mother. The first time I got beat up was by her hand. I learned a great lesson in the beatings and painful words she’d hurl at me with reckless abandon. While the little boy felt the pain in both body and soul, the man realizes a great wisdom in such a perspective. Mom, there are few people out there who could match your intensity when angry or your wit when words were all you could use as a weapon. At least I haven’t met any.

Yet, out of that, I now stand firm in my own perspective, and strong in my own wisdom. No man could match your fury, and no insult could challenge me as much as the ones you offered me. I have risen beyond those limitations in no small part because you taught me the power of my own thoughts, the strength of each and every agreement I make, and the focus necessary to create a truth much different from the one I was taught.

I was taught loss from my mother. Whether it was the relationship with my biological father that was prevented, or the loss of everything I ever knew as a child as I grew beyond my youth, you taught me loss well. Your lessons are seen in the relationships destroyed by my own dysfunction, in the friendships I keep at arm’s length, and in the empty spaces that now permeate my life. Your lessons were seen in the self-destructive agreements I once made, in the patterns of denial and desperation I once cut into the cloaks and shrouds of a boy afraid of his own shadow.

Yet, I learned a great love of aloneness. I’ve learned new agreements along the way. I’ve learned a new way of living that was not taught to me out of some book or from some perfect family, but rather taught to me by walking in the brier patches and sharp, rocky inclines. It was my falls that taught me to stand, my sadness that taught me great joy, and my willingness to lose everything in order to find the things most important to me in a life I only wish to live well.

It was you who not only gave me the strength to stand, but also the ability to think beyond what anyone else would teach me I am.

Recently, I had the great fortune of telling someone how much I love my life, and how certain I am that I would not change a thing. I was able to, with not much description, explain how the painful past brought me to a place of great joy, how the loss brought me great gain, and how each and every moment led to a great perspective in the next. You were in each thought, dear mother, and I discovered that I was not angry with you at all.

Instead, I was very grateful. Grateful because you were the “far from perfect” mother. Grateful because you taught me all you had to teach. Grateful because in all of the mothers the universe could have picked, it picked you. Did I often pray for the Brady Bunch parents? Absolutely, but I know that my life would have been one boring hodge-podge of illusion….something I certainly don’t delve in much today.

Now, as I sit in my writing chair with tears streaming down my face, I understand that I have always loved you. While distance was the best choice for us in this existence, we were always close. Each time I got angry with my own little ones and decided to hug them instead of beat them. Each time I let my kids be who they were instead of creating them into something else. Each time I remember myself not too long ago…

And while you weren’t the bandage that healed the wounds, you certainly gave me the drive to find them.

You were not a bad person in the grand scheme of things. You created greatness. I don’t judge you as harshly as I once did, and I see you as someone who has a great value. Each time I pick up my proverbial sword to do battle with equally proverbial demons I raise it to you, for you not only taught me how to wield that sword but you also taught me how to love within the battle, and how to silence those voices you once gave me. Both the silence and the voices were your greatest gifts to me.

You gave me a stick, dear woman, and I no longer beat myself with it. Instead, I decided to paint with it, and while the stick is mine, you did, in fact, give me it. What a great gift it turned out to be.

Peace.

From the Mouth of Babes

April 30, 2015 / Tom

Someone I knew just died. He died a horrific death, one that I would not have wished on anyone. I can only hope that his fear was comforted, his suffering brief, and his ending swift. I can also only hope that his family is able to find comfort in the lives they shared, and joy in the moments they remember.

I do not want condolences for me. I didn’t like the guy, issues stemming from high school bullshit that it seems I haven’t gotten over. Yet, as I read the story of his death, and saw the pictures of his loving family, the memory of anger began to be replaced by the experience of love. His young son will cry tears of great sorrow, tears that will effect him his entire life to come. His beautiful and devoted wife will miss her husband, her partner, and she will find an empty space beside her for some time to come as fate has dealt an ugly hand.

I don’t know his family, and I didn’t know the man, now.

He seemed to be an accomplished man in societal terms, having built a business doing what he seemed to love. There were mentions of his athletic prowess, his volunteering in working with kids develop their own athletic prowess. It appears his son has the same skills, and the same passions.

One can only hope that light is not dimmed, and that what inspired this young man continues. Yet, we know that loss can be a harsh teacher. A boy without his father is not the same boy at all.

The man seemed to have been a church-going man, and was described as a man comfortable in knowing his soul was prepared for whatever end that was coming. I think our souls are always prepared, it’s our minds, disconnected from the awareness of divine confidence, that aren’t. It seemed he had found some connection there, a connection I am sure served him well when the time came.

The reason I am sharing all of this is because the experience has offered me a vast realization. Regardless of how present we may normally be, or how enlightened we may feel, or how peaceful we may see ourselves as, there is always something to remind us of our humanity. There is always something that reminds us of this dream we call life, and our power within it.

I sat with my decades-old anger. I replayed scenes over and over again as the child in me raged with the wounds newly exposed. I could feel the salt rise, the passion replace the compassion, the fantasy overtook my reality.

I didn’t’ try to stop it. No, resistance is not only futile, but gives the beast great power. Instead, I allowed that river to flow, staying out of its way while compassionately observing it. I sat, firm, in the resolution that I needed this experience, and I would honor it for what it was going to teach me.

And teach me it did. Anger is now gratitude, chaos is now peace, and the rage of then has now been replaced by the love of Now.

I don’t seek accolades for this. Instead, I just wanted to show the great power of loving Awareness. We can heal ourselves, but first we must love ourselves without questions. We must stop vilifying ourselves for our thoughts, our reactions, our humanness. We have to embrace who we are, lovingly observe who we are, and sometimes do nothing but allow the natural change that comes. A change that will come quite naturally if we just stop hating ourselves and trying to restrain who we are.

I don’t hate the child in me, so I let him have his turn. I marvel quite joyously and his anger, and give him due. He deserves his moments, for he’s lived enough to have them. I realize, though, that his influence on the Man I Am cannot be long. I hear his voice, and I feel his reactions, but ultimately the Man I Am decides what the present moment will bring. So, I figuratively love the boy I was as the Man I Am, and from that springs all things.

So, in this morning’s meditation I was able to hold the man I once knew in high regard, and forgive the boy he was. I realize neither of us truly exist anymore, so holding onto such a low standard is my fault, not his. I suffer at my own hand, no one else’s.

He who does not know himself cannot truly know others. In this moment I can hold the man’s family in such loving compassion and do whatever I’m called to do to comfort. I can freely move within a world not always friendly, but always loving in wisdom. I can love openly having loved despite myself.

Peace.

Through The Peephole

March 19, 2015 / Tom

Through the peephole I saw you. You were dancing, wildly, joyfully, with a purpose that seemed to have no purpose at all. I could see your body move beneath the thin fabric of your dress, and I could hear you pant loudly at the effortless exertion of your dance. You were in bliss, and although I swore I could hear your heart beating loudly in the distance, I stayed back, allowing you your moment where you thought no one was looking

Through the peephole I saw you. You were laughing loudly at the ether, sharing moments with the Sun as you twirled to Heaven’s sound. Your lips glistened with the anticipation of each coming note as your hardened nipples gave testament to the pleasure of all that just had passed. I could feel my excitement build as each part of you that sang touched each part of me that heard your song.

Through the peephole I saw you. You were moving lightly as even gravity seemed to not have a hold on you. There was no effort in your motion, and it was like nothing existed outside that room you had found, where you could be hidden and yourself without the telling glances of the world around you.

My tears came spilling through the peephole. I fell in love with you that instant, knowing you as you were before the roles you play for me were born, before our universe became filled with the power of our minds. I wanted to dance with you, but then you’d see me too, and nothing would be the same.

I both hated and loved the door through which I gazed. It kept me from this you I saw, and I hated it for that. Yet, it gave you security to dance to the great unheard song, to laugh to jokes not yet told, to fly among the clouds that saw fit to meet you there. For that, I loved that door, and I gave thanks for the little spec of light that brought me there through my darkness. Through the peephole the light will shine, and through the peephole we would shine if only we’d stop looking at the door.

It’s through the peepholes of our lives that we find life, and through the doors that we find death, and in the walls around us the holes by which we can make our escape. It is when I see you that I see me, and when you fly it is then I realize I, too, can be free.

Goodbye, Dear Friend. Thank you for the lessons.

February 16, 2015 / Tom

“Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally… Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.” ~don Miguel Ruiz.

She drinks too much, and I know it. Through the multiple 2am calls of slurred speech it became painfully obvious. The countless tears and broken promises only supported the contention that I was, forever, losing my friend.

She would call for help, and I would lose sleep and little bits of me giving it to her. She would cry, scream, and then sit idly quiet for minutes at a time. Then came the question, and the answer she wanted to hear only so she could start the cycle all over again.

Sometimes she was coherent, but mostly she wasn’t. One time she knocked on my apartment door and fell inside when I answered it, reeking of the disgusting combination of alcohol, sweat and cigarettes. She knelt where she fell, sobbing uncontrollably about all of the ills she saw as uniquely hers. When the sobbing stopped she reached for my manhood, telling me she wanted to get me off for “being such a good friend.”

I declined, and kicked her out of my apartment after getting her car keys from her. I yelled at her to sleep it off, and that I’d talk to her when she had sobered up. I watched her stumble to her car, at which time I use the remote to unlock the doors so she could climb into her back seat. I then locked the car, uttered a silent intention for her safety, and went to bed.

At 5am I was woken up by her knocking at the door. I invited her in, and made her some tea. She sat there, apologizing, telling me about the events that led up to her drunken stupor. These were excuses, of course, because her destination was always the bottle, but watching her create these grand schemes forcing her to drink herself into oblivion were both painful and fascinating at the same time. She had a fantastic wit when it suited her addiction, a wit she’d purposely dull in order to be unnoticeable in the room when sober.

After a short time she left. It was the last time I would see my friend again physically. She would call all of the time, always drunk beyond description and completely out of her mind. She’d ask me about meditation, about awareness, about how to heal, and my answer was always the same:

“You’ll heal when you make the choice to heal, and evidence of that choice will be in your arriving at a therapist’s office, or a rehab center somewhere. I’ll drive you if you want.”

That would be met with momentary silence, and then a powerful diatribe of profanity and insults. Most she directed at me, some she directed at her. I always had the feeling that she was looking in a mirror somewhere, shouting all of these insults at that reflection. Sometimes tears would form and make their way down my cheek. Sometimes I’d threaten to call the authorities. Sometimes, I’d just hang up.

The last time I talked to her was typical. My cell ringtone woke me from a dead sleep, and the combination of my own fatigue coupled with her own inability to talk made for an interesting beginning to this particular conversation. The words weren’t much different, but she seemed a bit off. Even for her.

“I’ve taken some downers,” she finally admitted. I sighed.

“How many?” I answered.

“Just a few. You have nothing to worry about.”

More insanity followed, finally by the icing on the proverbial cake.

“I’m coming over there and I’m going to fuck you.”

“No, you’re not,” I answered tersely.

“I’m such a loser that I throw myself at you and you won’t take me.”

“I think you are a winner. The alcohol and drugs? Well, not so much.”

“Fuck you, asshole…”

More insults and names, none of which I could take very personally. I cared for her, as a friend, and would sit there with her until she got tired of the bullshit. I would not take a thing she was saying personally. That really seemed to piss her off.

Finally, after a few minutes of trying, she had enough.

“Just go fuck yourself,” she yelled. “I’m done with you. You can’t make me feel this way. You can’t just reject me and get away with it. You’re a piece of shit, and I can’t believe I wanted you anyway. I’m too good for you.”

Then the click. I was used to the click, what I wasn’t used to was the lack of her apologetic call the next morning.

A week went by when I got the news. It came from a Facebook friend who she thought would be my “perfect match.” That friend, however, was engaged to be married. I laughed at the mistake.

“She’s dead,” read the message.

“What?”

“Her organs shut down and she passed away. She drank herself to death. Her funeral is this weekend.”

I just sat there. I can’t say I was shocked, but I was stunned. Apparently, she had never sobered up, then slipped into unconsciousness and died. Her life and her potential both snuffed out yet fully realized in long moment of suffering.

“Thank you,” were my last words on the subject.

It took me a while to allow the experience to settle. I lit an incense stick, sat on my meditation pillow, and just let everything swirl and fall into place.

In the end, I realized love. I loved my friend, so much that I let her be even as I tried to help her with her suffering. I would offer her the information she requested while letting her choose what to do with it. I would try to pick her up when she fell, fully realizing that sometimes she just needed to sit in her own stew. I let her be her, never judging her as much as I reflected on my own reactions to her. I’d only leave her when her path was too much for me, when she seemed intent on carrying me back into the proverbial burning house.

In the end she felt I rejected her, but I know I didn’t. She offered many beautiful things to the world, and I had embraced them with such dedication that I had no room for the darkest parts. I let dark areas linger around us because she wanted them to, but they were rarely the things I saw. I knew many beautiful things about my friend, and in my truth, in my compassion, in my love, I could not let what I saw as darkness enter.

Sometimes it’s not dark at all. Sometimes my eyes are closed.

When she was hungry, I gave her food while always allowing her the choice to eat. When she was thirsty, I gave her something to drink while always protecting her right to choose whether or not to drink it. When she was naked, I gave her clothes, always allowing her the choice to put them on. She, in turn, gave me insights that will always serve me if I’d only choose to use them.

In the end, I gave her the best of me while always honoring her choice on whether or not to accept. I believe she also gave me the best of her while always honoring my own choice to accept or not.

In the end, she made her choice on how to end her experience. While I might not agree with it, I realize that is my problem, not hers. Maybe at some level she did hear me. I can almost hear her contort my words to suit her own needs, and I chuckle a bit at the wisdom.

“I will destroy my body if I so choose. Your acceptance of this is not mandatory nor necessary.”

She would be right, of course. Well played, my friend. Well played.

I sometimes wonder if I just didn’t get the fact that not only did she understand what I was saying to her, but that she was a tremendous student. She’d often say that she loved my philosophy of living, and her questions always seemed to be directed at exactly how to live it. We’d talk about the Four Agreements, and how the essence of suffering is found in the strength it provides, both in its experience and in its survival.

“We just need to stop seeing suffering as so ‘bad’. Then we can discover its true value and we can ride that wonderful wave for all its worth,” I’d say to her often. She didn’t object as much as most do when I describe suffering in this way. Perhaps she understood much better than I gave her credit for.

It’s been almost a year since she passed, and I’ll admit there’s been more than a few times I’d wake up at 2am, half expecting the phone to ring. It doesn’t, of course, and I often smile at the expectation. There are times when I will sit in stillness and honor her memory, not as some wayward person on the path to self-destruction, but as another in a line of great Masters that have been in my life to which I gently bow in honor. I only hope I’ve been a student equal to their task.

Maybe I’ve Always Had It Wrong

October 12, 2014 / Tom

I’ve been reflecting on myself today, as reflected by a myriad of others who provide me with some context.

I’ve been blessed, although I am sure in a way most would not consider a “blessing.” Yet, I have been as I see it, in the most beautifully painful and complete way possible. There are no blessings and curses in my life, only blessings, and I accept them completely.

There is a tremendous amount of love in the depths I’ve been driven to explore. Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve sought out meaning to each experience, often reliving the “negative” experience over and over again until, finally, the meaning was discovered. Often I’d use “positive” experiences as a contrast in order to discover things I would have never seen otherwise.

Ironically, many things I once thought of as “positive” are no longer so, and those I considered “negative” have changed to wonderful positives. The mind-world connection is amazing; once you change your mind your world changes, and as your world changes so does your mind.

It’s why I don’t consider love in the way most do. I don’t see it as a positive or a negative, but rather the canvas by which both are painted. It doesn’t change, only our minds do. Instead, it remains constant and accepting of that wonderful vehicle of mind/ego. Love and ego work together to expose the truth…a constant that only changes when we do. Love is truly like water…it takes any form you place it in.

Enjoy the metamorphosis, and the evolution. You will see others who are beginning to become aware of this journey, and you will smile as they protest, as they shout out all of their good intentions. You will take joy, and some pain, in the distortions they try to hold onto, and you will always offer a helping hand, in your own unique way. And you will recognize those hands offered to you, even if they weren’t fully aware they were extended.

Acceptance is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to acceptance. Tolerance is not the key to peace, peace is the key to tolerance. Gratefulness is not the key to love, love is the key to gratefulness.

And maybe, just maybe, the Bodhi tree was not the path to enlightenment, enlightenment was the path to the Bodhi tree. Perhaps the cross was not the path to salvation, but salvation the path to the cross. Perhaps you were not the means to love, but love was the means to you.

Please, Touch Me (Excerpt)

September 16, 2014 / Tom

…

I feel alone as I stretch toward the empty spaces in my life, the voids giving me room to move, room to know myself. Suddenly, I feel you there.

I love the way you feel. I beg you…Please touch me.

There is something about the wave of pleasure that cascades through me as your lips press against mine. I love the way you feel, the way you help me feel, the sheer pleasure of it all.

Please visit here for more..

I Long for Winter

September 12, 2014 / Tom

Silence.

What is wrong with basking in the silence?

What is wrong with the aloneness of nothing’s sound? Where is the error within this isolation? Within the miracle of those spaces caught between the notes, within the sweet sound of creation stuck within the cracks of what we see as destruction?

From somewhere comes a sigh. From outward poses of false realities come awkward words of truthful fantasies.

I walk along trying to find the mindless footprints I’ve cast in the hardened bedrock of my life; wondering why some fear the sturdiness of this place, why they search for escape by looking for the invisible tracks they swear they left behind.

I question, they don’t respond.

They react.

Read more here…

The Asshole Look

August 3, 2014 / Tom

I just had an experience with an asshole giving me a “look”. Now, in the “old days” that look might have rendered him a bloody, probably incoherent mess on the floor, or at the very least he would have gotten a verbal ass whooping that would have left him stuttering and stammering like a fool. My hands would have been sore, and I’d be making calls for bail money, and I’d feel horrible about my lack of control, but that would have been the outcome.

I would have heard the voices in my head that would have told me I was not strong enough, tough enough, or worthy enough to be superior to this person. I would have reacted violently in order to prove them wrong, and that reaction would ALWAYS lead to other voices telling me I was not strong enough, tough enough, or worthy enough to be my sincere, loving, compassionate self. The first set of voices belonged to other people, the second set were mine.

My choice is ALWAYS, “which voices are the one you wish to listen to?”

While I do get angry when pretenders scratch the surface of my insecurity, I realize that the reaction is truly my own that has nothing to do with them. That reaction leads ME into fantasy; fantasy that suggests I am something different from who I am, fantasy that causes me to create outcomes that are contrary to the person I am, fantasy where I listen to voices not my own.

I am grateful for the physical strength I have been given, but I’m more grateful for the mental and physical strength I have developed. That’s the value I find in the past. The past is, for me, like some long-forgotten workout that helped make me a little bit stronger today than I would have been without it. I value it in the place it has gotten me, but for little else. The real value is in the exercise of Now, the boundaries I am pushing in the asanas I am trying in the present tense of my current state of being.

This experience, too, will only serve to get me to another. It has no other value except in where I am and where I am going. I can assign certain values in it if I choose. I can create importance in it if I so desire, but those choices, too, are for me and only me to make. Things become important, moments gain value, only in the minds of the people who have them. Beyond that, they are nothing more than vehicles to another moment, another time, another choice.

The Bitter End, A Sweet Beginning

July 15, 2014 / Tom

And in the minute the ending came, my life began.

I’d like to believe that, and the million or so other clichés I’ve heard that are supposed to make me feel better about the bitter end. I can’t. It simply is not true.

The truth is that I can’t remember the beginning, and I’ll likely not realize the end. All I have is the in between, the life I’ve created, the stories that have been born along the way. I’ve learned to appreciate each strand, each single moment in the thread of my story, and I’ve learned to not sweat the big stuff. I’ve learned to live more fully than I ever have before.

Perhaps that is why we sometimes see life as a series of endings and beginnings. Perhaps it is easier to pretend that the pain of yesterday can’t exist here in the new beginning of today. Perhaps we have become so adept at lying to ourselves that we don’t mind telling just one more lie to get through the cold spells.

I’ve decided to think a little differently right now. I’ve decided to honor the happiness I dwell in now by realizing the million tears that such happiness has been built upon. I’ve decided to dwell in the house that experience has built by remembering the back-breaking work that went into building it. I’ve decided to relish the warmth of this summer day by honoring the cold winter days that got me here.

I’ve decided to love it all.

Of course there needs to be a caveat to all of this, a disclaimer if you will. Realizing the sadness and tears does not mean I cry. Just the opposite, as I sit having rarely smiled so broadly in my life. Realizing the sadness makes that smile brighter, or so it seems. I can revel in the joy of this moment not by being sad, but by remembering the experience I’ve had of sadness much in the way a thirsty man relishes each and every drop of cool water as it makes its way to his stomach.

We, as humans being, often walk a fine line. I envision it as that line where Yin and Yang meet, where darkness surrenders to the light, where a smile creeps through tears. Sometimes we are in the Yin, and sometimes we are in the Yang, but I sense we are rarely far from their horizon when we are in tune with who we really are. I feel we may straddle that line as we walk this life journey, rarely aware of it as we focus only on where each footfall may land. It’s when we stop walking, stop moving and sit still, that we realize our ass was designed to perfectly straddle the line we rarely see.

I’m fortunate because I’ve not only discovered that line for myself, but I’ve found each step reminds me of its presence. For each bitter end there is a sweet beginning, and for each sweet beginning there is a bitter end. Sometimes the sweetness is mild, and sometimes the bitterness is easy to swallow, but the realities of our existence is always stretched from the Alpha to the Omega with each of us rarely seeing the line where each meets. I’d like to say that line is where the magic happens, but it’s not. The magic happens all around, not just in one tiny sliver of the whole. Instead, I see that line as where the magic is realized, where the magic is focused like a laser that easily cuts through the bullshit we’ve created around it. It’s where we can discover the magic of Yin and Yang, pain and joy, fear and love. It’s where we realize it’s all the same even as it’s different, where it is all real even as it is unbridled fantasy.

That discovery made me smile. Hell, it made me laugh out loud, for real. It’s also comforting to know I can play there any time I choose. Here, there, is all the same. There is no duality even as I experience it. There is no separateness even as I create it.

Whether you are at the bitter end of something, or the sweet beginning of it, enjoy. I try to quickly find the center of things, the happy medium, the twilight. I’ve learned that I am happiest there, always free to bask in the light or sleep in the dark. There is a reason we find the sunrise so beautiful and remain in awe of the sun setting while rarely finding the stretch between them very inspiring. The real joy, the real liberating moment for me came when I realized that the sun is always rising and always setting, and that I am always living and always dying, and that I am free to choose which one I focus on. I’ve also come to enjoy those moments when my ass straddles the line where both meet, when I’m sitting in active stillness, painfully enjoying the silent noise of my own mind at playful work.

And now that realization that makes it all become benign. There is really no line beyond our need to draw it. It’s really a blur, a place where circles are drawn. I remember being on an airplane once during a sunrise and seeing this for myself. I could see where night and day still existed in their separate selves, but I really couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. There were little bits of indistinguishable light mixed in with little bits of indistinguishable darkness. They existed there, as one, without fanfare. In my observation, there are no true beginnings or endings. It’s all just one, blurry line where on one foot sits night and on the other sits day with life happening in between.

This all seems confusing, I know. At the very least it seems contradictory. I can’t help it and I fought it for a long time before I simply surrendered to the truth as I experience it. It may be true that when one door closes another opens, but I’ve found living happens in the hallway between the doors, and in shutting the door behind us we can’t simply pretend the room behind us doesn’t exist, or that we haven’t walked through it. Instead, I’ll enjoy the corridor before I walk through another, and I’ll love the door as being both a part of the hallway as well as the room.